Editor’s note: Wells Fargo has provided a special guest blog to reiterate the importance of collaboration in foreclosure prevention efforts and to detail an upcoming event where homeowners can get assistance.

California’s economic recovery continues to show encouraging signs and while the state’s foreclosure rate is among the lowest in the country, there are still many struggling homeowners in the Golden State.

That’s why at Wells Fargo we believe in collaboration with credit counselors such as BALANCE and programs like Keep Your Home California (KYHC) are essential to providing solutions to help struggling homeowners identify resources to stay in their home.

For instance, on April 5, we are joining BALANCE and the KYHC program to host a Home Preservation Workshop in Antioch, California to assist Wells Fargo homeowners facing payment challenges. At the Home Preservation Workshop, homeowners will have the opportunity to meet face to face with housing counselors and Wells Fargo to learn about options that may help you overcome payment challenges including:

Understand how you may be able to keep your home and avoid foreclosure,

Find out ways to help you get back on track with your mortgage payments,

Determine your KYHC eligibility to accept the offer of assistance

Connect with helpful resources such as housing counselors, and

Learn about online tools available to you.

We have learned when we are able to work with customers we are often successful in helping them identify a solution to avoid foreclosure. We are not alone in our efforts and our collaboration with trusted nonprofits such as HUD-approved counselors and programs like Keep Your Home California makes all the difference for assisting homeowners who are coping with very real and life-changing struggles such as job loss, underemployment, health issues, divorce and even having negative equity on your home.

Such challenges may feel insurmountable for homeowners to manage on their own. Or even worse, homeowners can be victimized by unscrupulous mortgage modification scammers that create false-promises of modifications with a fee of hundreds and even thousands of dollars. As time passes, a homeowner’s difficult circumstances may become dire and opportunities to provide solutions to help keep them in their home while workout options fade away.

Call your lender or a HUD-approved counselor

My advice to homeowners is if you are facing financial difficulties, the most important action you can take is to contact your lender or a trusted HUD-approved credit counselor. That’s why the work of trusted HUD-approved nonprofits such as BALANCE and Keep Your Home California is so vital for homeowners and our country’s housing recovery. At Wells Fargo, this kind of collaboration is invaluable to assist the homeowners.

My view is the work of trusted HUD-approved counselor does for homeowners is an important complement to mortgage servicers like Wells Fargo. And even as we see signs the housing market is improving, Wells Fargo believes supporting the work of HUD-approved housing and credit counselors is the right thing to do.

Event Information

Home Preservation Workshop hosted by BALANCE with Keep Your Home California and Wells Fargo.

While many Americans cheered, made soon-to-be broken resolutions, raised a glass for a celebratory toast, or sang Auld Lang Syne to ring in 2017, a popular and successful federal mortgage-assistance program essentially ended with little ceremony on New Year’s Eve.

The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) started in February 2009, at the height of the foreclosure crisis. Since then, the Making Home Affordable-managed program has assisted more than 2 million Americans struggling financially and faced with the very real possibility of losing their homes.

But as HAMP fades away, Keep Your Home California and its Principal Reduction Program will continue to help homeowners in the state faced with financial hardships and hard-to-make mortgage payments through 2020, or until all the funding is used, whichever comes first.

Keep Your Home California, also federally funded, shares the mission of helping homeowners to remain in their homes. There are five unique programs that make up Keep Your Home California, designed to address the different circumstances homeowners face that could lead to foreclosure.

Like HAMP, Keep Your Home California requires homeowners to have suffered a hardship, such as a job loss, cut in pay, reduced hours, divorce, a death in the family or extraordinary medical bills.

Keep Your Home California’s Principal Reduction Program offers different, but comparable benefits for homeowners. The Principal Reduction Program provides as much as $100,000 in assistance to reduce a homeowner’s outstanding principal balance. The lower principal balance is then recast, with no changes to the rate or term of the loan, often resulting in lower monthly mortgage payments. In the fourth quarter of 2016, the median monthly payment was reduced by $258 after Principal Reduction Program assistance was provided.

The Principal Reduction Program can also help homeowners solve for affordability, regardless of their equity position. If a homeowner’s monthly payment becomes unaffordable due to a financial hardship, they can qualify to have their principal balance reduced to a level that will result in an affordable monthly payment based on their income.

Keep Your Home California will continue to offer the Mortgage Reinstatement Assistance Program – allowing homeowners to catch-up on their past-due mortgage payments, up to $54,000. It also offers the Unemployment Mortgage Assistance Program which provides as much as $3,000 per month for up to 18 months – or a maximum of $54,000 – to out-of-work homeowners eligible for jobless benefits from the California Employment Development Department.

Homeowners who planned to apply for HAMP, but failed to make deadline of Dec. 31, 2016, should consider Keep Your Home California’s Principal Reduction Program, or another Keep Your Home California program that can help them in their situation. The state-managed program is completely free, from the first phone call to the mortgage assistance, whether it’s a few thousand dollars or up to the maximum of $100,000.

In addition to a financial hardship, homeowners must meet county-by-county income requirements and their mortgage servicer – the company that collects the monthly payment – must participate in Keep Your Home California. More than 250 servicers, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank, are enrolled in the program.

Homeowners interested in learning more or applying for the program should call the counseling center at 888-954-KEEP (5337) or find more information at www.KeepYourHomeCalifornia.org or www.ConservaTuCasaCalifornia.org for Spanish speakers. The counseling center is open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays. Calls can be taken in virtually any language through a free translation service.

Keep Your Home California

Keep Your Home California is a $2 billion federal program run by the state, focused on helping low and moderate income families avoid foreclosure, stay in their homes, and maintain an affordable mortgage payment for long-term homeownership.